


Sin Coucheth At The Door

by Daegaer



Category: Good Omens
Genre: Angels, Cars, Demons, Sofas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-18
Updated: 2003-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally written for the Contrelamontre "couch" challenge.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Sin Coucheth At The Door

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Contrelamontre "couch" challenge.

Driving at a sedate seventy miles an hour so that he could enjoy the scenery, Crowley suddenly slammed on his brakes, put the car into reverse and shot into the smallest of parking spaces, ignoring the sound of car-horns and terrified cursing from the drivers behind him. He hopped out of the car and peered in the shop window. For a while, he'd been thinking of giving his flat a new look, but had been vacillating about which new look to go for. All the magazines seemed to suggest that upwardly mobile young men should have a lot of black furniture dotted around the place, but Crowley felt that would just make him fade into the background, and if he was a fade-into-the-background sort of fellow he'd be driving a blessed Ford. Minimalism appealed to him - clutter and knickknacks were much more the angel's sense of style - but he didn't want to be like all the other yuppies. This, however - he smiled at the enormous white leather suite with the thrill of incipient extravagance, and sauntered in.

"That suite," he said off-hand as an assistant came up. "I'll take it."

"I'm sorry, Sir, it's reserved for another customer," the assistant said. "We do have --"

"No," Crowley mused. "It'll look perfect in my place. Let's not quibble. I'll pay half as much again."

The assistant opened his mouth, already shaking his head. Crowley leaned forward, smiling toothily.

"How about twice as much? I'll use separate cheques, shall I? What's your name, friend?"

The assistant shut his mouth, then opened it again. Crowley hummed a little tune to himself and waited.

"I'd lose my job!" the assistant hissed, looking round.

Crowley smiled at another one almost in the bag, and produced his chequebook. It was all over bar the shouting, even if the assistant didn't know it. He wrote a cheque to the shop with the suite's price, and then wrote another for the same amount again, and waved it in front of his victim's nose.

"Your name?"

"Ian. Ian Slevin," the assistant whispered, eyes huge as Crowley wrote in his name and signed with a flourish.

" _Lovely_ to do business with you, Ian," Crowley said, passing it over. "I'd like it delivered today, OK?"

"We can't deliver till Thursday," Ian said rather hoarsely, stuffing the cheque into his pocket.

"Today," Crowley said cheerfully, writing his address down on a slip of paper. He tucked it into Ian's breast pocket. "You can manage that, can't you, Ian?"

He got a silent nod in response, and Ian turned and fled. Crowley stroked a hand along the back of his new settee, and strolled out. He drove home, had a cup of coffee while listening to the lunch time news on the radio, and with a dismissive sweep of his hand made his current suite of furniture vanish.

A remarkably short time later his doorbell rang. He peered out his window and saw his lovely new things being unloaded, and skipped down the stairs to open the front door. The three deliverymen made rather hard work of getting the armchairs up the stairs to his flat, and he could hardly wait to see if they had heart attacks with the settee. He made encouraging remarks as they struggled up the stairs with it, and hid his laughter at their obvious desire to throttle him. When they finally got it in to his sitting room he spent a long time making them move it around till it was in the perfect position. Not at all coincidentally, this was the very first position they had placed it in. He felt quite buoyed up by their annoyance, and the fact that the eldest of them considered young show-offs like himself as one of the worst effects of Thatcher's Britain. The two younger men just envied him and knew they could never afford a flat or furniture like his, and resented it _terribly_. Crowley smiled kindly at them all, and rubbed their noses in it by tipping extravagantly.

When they were gone, Crowley examined his new things with glee. The armchairs were large and comfortable, and were arranged like self-effacing handmaidens to the true centre of their little furniture world. The settee was huge and luxurious, gleaming white and filling his nostrils with its new-leather smell. It was new, it was ultra-modern, Aziraphale would _hate_ it. He'd have to have the angel over soon. With his old furniture gone the sitting room looked much bigger, even with a six-seater settee taking up an entire side of the room. With a thought he changed the carpet to white to match.

It was furniture that only someone wealthy and extravagant would think of putting in a one-bedroom flat. It was meant for someone who did a lot of entertaining, who would have a lot of well-dressed bottoms sitting on the comfortably deep cushions, and it was all his.

Quite alone and quite content, Crowley enthroned himself in the very centre of his lovely new settee.

  
Genesis 4:7 _If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door._


End file.
